New Technology: Racism in the U.S. Music Industry During Cold War and Civil Rights Eras (Part 4/8)

With new technology, things become more accessible and hence reach a larger audience. But sometimes, with the development of new technologies, like microgroove recording and transistor radio, we notice less inclusivity and more exclusivity. During the Cold War, with the evolution of music recording and distribution, we actually saw more opportunities for discrimination and racism in the music industry. Interesting how that works, right?

Image: Fine Art America

Like economics and politics, the technology of the music industry played an equal role in enforcing racial division within the business and beyond in the United States. A number of technological advances in the 1940s set the stage for influential structural and social changes in the music industry for years to follow: such as microgroove recording and transistor radio (Garofalo, 333). Many of these advancements further emphasized or exacerbated racial division within the industry. Due to a postwar shellac shortage (shellac was used to construct the new technology of microgroove records), all of the major United States record labels made the executive decision to abandon the production of African American music (Garofalo, 335). This policy indicated the explicit and inherent racism of the industry; in reaction to a shortage in supply for production, major labels deliberately eliminated music made by a minority group of artists, enforcing the erasure and invisibility of an entire group of voices.

In addition to record production, U.S. radio was racially segregated until Rock and Roll became an influential economic force (Barnet and Burriss, 166). In the early 1950s, certain radio stations marketed towards the white population, whereas others marketed towards the Black population (Barnet, 166). Furthermore, oftentimes white musicians would cover songs originally created by Black musicians; they would sell more copies and gain more traction because white-oriented stations played their music (Barnet, 166). For example, Bill Haley covered “Shake, Rattle and Roll” in 1954, originally by Black artist Joe Turner. Haley’s version became a massive hit and reached an audience far wider than Turner’s original performance (Barnet 167).

Throughout the Cold War and Civil Rights eras, radio stations gradually became less racially homogenous as white-oriented stations began to play the original versions of songs (Barnet, 167). However, even after the racial barriers of radio began to dissipate, record labels re-established segregation within their own organizations; for example, labels created many euphemisms for Black music divisions: Soul, Rhythm and Blues, and Urban, to name a few. It provokes the following question: did this type of categorization exacerbate racial division in the United States, or was it a valid form of marketing segmentation that fueled the economic desires of the industry (Barnet, 168)? And perhaps, economic, political, and technological endeavors were merely excuses to cover up the very real and obvious racism of the music industry.

Bibliography

Barnet, Richard D., and Larry L. Burriss. Controversies of the Music Industry. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Accessed May 6, 2021. https://archive.org/details/controversiesofm0000barn.

Garofalo, Reebee. "From Music Publishing to MP3: Music and Industry in the Twentieth Century." American Music 17, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 318-54. Accessed May 6, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052666.

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